Apparently Sec. of Transportation Ray LaHood thinks he lives in France, or maybe Amsterdam, or some such tiny, closed-in country. That is the only conclusion I can come to with his idiotic statements recently given to CNSNews. On May 3, LaHood announced a snazzy, wondermous, neato and momentous "sea change" in American transportation, a great idea whose time had come. And that great idea was: Everyone should ride a bike to work.

Most Americans live between 10 and 25 miles away from their places of work so Americans spend at least a half hour one way in their cars going to work. In 2005, for instance, it was estimated by the federal government that the average drive-time for America's workers was 24.3 minutes. Adding the rest of the day's traveling needs, a University of California study found that we spend some 101 minutes a day driving.

With all that distance to cover, the question becomes, how the heck can we expect Americans to use bikes for commutes to work? No matter how differently Ray LaHood configures the roads, America is simply too wide open to make it efficacious to daily ride a bike to work. I mean, is this fool expecting people to add hours and hours to their transportation time every day? Who has time for that nonsense?

Uh, Ray. Did you forget that GM owes a pile of money to the federal government? That the auto industry is on life support? Did you take at least one economics course in college where they talked about the fact that consumers have to buy and use a product (ie, a car) for suppliers (ie, auto companies) to be financially healthy?

We’ve been hearing this from the former mayor of our town for years. Given the distances most of us travel it’s not feasible. Besides on some streets the biker’s take their lives in their hands. So the city used stimulous money to paint bike lanes on a bunch of the streets. Silly Silly Silly

You complete morons. People are fed up with the congestion on their roads because of the way you complete incompetents build roads.

Yes, we are sick of being stuck in our cars because our current crop of transportation experts are too arrogantly wedded to green ideology that they do not build adequate, properly designed roadways for us.

For example, notice in any major urban area lanes that suddenly end for no apparent reason creating choke points that clog up traffic? That is by design. Going all the way back to the 1950s Urban Planners designed in choke points in traffic arteries with the notion that that barrier to automotive traffic would encourage use of mass transit systems.

Build us roads that are designed to work and a great deal of our congestion problems go away.

But that will never happen as long as the Green Fascists dominate our Government at all levels

8
posted on 05/04/2010 10:09:53 AM PDT
by MNJohnnie
(The problem with Socialism is eventually you run our of other peoples money. Lady Thatcher)

Oh, HELL NO! I have to drive 15 miles just to get to the grocery store and I have a DAILY 125+mile commute into work. And to top it all off, I live in Texas. Temps here routinely soar in excess of 90 by mid- May.

Zero and the first Wookie can cut back on their weekly ‘vacations’ with their oversized entourages FIRST before I cut back on my driving...even minutely.

Great idea! Shift GM to bike production and charge $30K/energyefficientbicycle. You are a genius! That way we can pay more retirement funds for GM employees without having to sack the taxpayers with the bill.

Yeah right! I can see taking a 34 mile bike ride one way to get my daughter to her special needs private school. Her needs far outpass what I am expecting or trusting the local public school to provide. The bike would have to be tandem , my daughter has not mastered riding a bike. Actually, we would need 3 seats, husband must be watched at all times due to a traumatic brain injury.

How nice of LaHood to forget that a renowned science reporter riding her bike home from work was killed last month when she was hit by a five-ton national guard truck ordered into DC by Obama for his nuclear security summit.

I dont recall the WH having a word to say. Apparently she wasnt as important to them as George Tiller.

21
posted on 05/04/2010 10:44:06 AM PDT
by freespirited
(There are a lot of bad Republicans but there are no good Democrats.--Ann Coulter)

These morons always confuse bicycling, which is a form of recreation, with being a form of transportation.

Here on the Front Range of Colorado, at an altitude of about a mile, we have very few days that any but extremely healthy 24 year-olds could bike to work.

Today, like many days, the wind is gusting at 50+ mph. Try biking to work in that!

In the summer, it can be brutally hot most days.

In the winter of course we have plenty of days where the high is 20 below zero, with even more days with a high of 10 degrees. Oh, and then there’s all that white stuff that comes down all the time here then and piles up and stays on the roads. And add a bit of wind to that, and guess what, you’ve got a blizzard!

And then what about that 15 pounds of laptop, accessories, and papers to be toted back and forth each time?

And what about moms and dads that drop off and pick up their children to and from work?

And how about those of us who are old and/or sick?

And what if work expects you to use your own vehicle for various job related activities in the day?

What about trips to the store before or after work to buy groceries and such?

What about visiting the doctor or dentist in the middle of the day?

So, if you multiply the few days of decent bicycling weather times the number of people who are extremely fit and completely well, don’t have children, don’t need to go to the store, don’t need their vehicle for work activities, don’t have 15 pounds are more of work-related stuff to tote, don’t need to make other trips in the middle of the day for other reasons, well then, how many people are left that can bike to work? About the number you see now! Which is virtually no one at any time.

Ray LaHood is a fool, and so is anyone who advocates bicycling as a form of transportation.

Actually, now that I think about it, Ray and all employees of the Department of Transportation should immediately set an example and be made to abandon their cars and bike to work at all times to prove the feasibility of this for we peasants.

24
posted on 05/04/2010 11:45:49 AM PDT
by catnipman
(Cat Nipman: Made from The Right Stuff)

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